Number One With a Bullet

The United States has the highest per capita gun ownership in the world. That means that the United States has the highest per capita murder rate in the world, right? Well, no actually. Not even close.

8 Responses to Number One With a Bullet

Detroit does NOT have highly restrictive gun laws, in fact they are very much “normal” and the current Chief of Police encourages the citizens of Detroit to defend themselves with lawfully purchased firearms.

Four minutes of refuting simple minded critiques with equally simple minded arguments. I am not going to pat myself on the back because the US homicide rate is lower than Honduras or Niger. Not a relevant comparison group of countries.

But the last two minutes comparing an area with alot of guns to other countries was more interesting. Of course an example isn’t evidence so we would need to look more systenatically to see if the pattern holds up.

But makes the point well that we need to understand the underlying social conditions that lead to homicidal violence whatever the mechanism. in the end it may make sense to compare Detroit to Honduras and Plano to Switzerland.

A simple counter-argument such as this is all that’s needed to refute the claim of “more firearms, more murder/crime”. It shows that banning firearms would have very little impact on the overall crime rate in the US.

If you look at the FBI’s data for murder, the top 4 states in the US with the highest number of murders are California, Texas, New York, and Illinois. Three of those four have the most restrictive gun laws out of all the states. The reason for Texas’ position can be easily postulated as one similar to California’s: Proximity to the Mexican border and large urban areas with substantial gang-related problems.

Crime is a socioeconomic issue that won’t be easily solved with a simple “ban guns” plan. Unfortunately, many Americans are too stupid to figure that out, but certain politicians are smart enough to use that stupidity to their own advantage.

I work in Detroit as an armed professional. Detroit does NOT have strict gun controls. In fact, Michigan is a “shall-issue” state. 500k people have concealed pistol license in Michigan. Get the facts right.